


touch the impossible

by longituddeonda



Category: Prospect (2018)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, F/M, Loneliness, Medical, Medical Inaccuracies, it's actually really bittersweet, not as sad as the tags appear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:14:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23435239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longituddeonda/pseuds/longituddeonda
Summary: “You still haven’t told me where you want to be dropped off,” you told him. Ezra had been recovering steadily, and you knew within another couple of your ship-generated light cycles he would be ready to leave.“I have never been given the option,” he said.You blinked. There was still so much you didn’t know about Ezra. And over the time you had spent with him you had grown so accustomed to his presence that this very conversation was one you had been putting off.“Do you have family? Friends? Anyone that you would stay with?”“I am alone.”
Relationships: Ezra (Prospect)/Reader
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	touch the impossible

You were on your way back to your ship when you heard the sound of thrower fire. You had dropped down into the brush where you were standing and waited.

It was all over with the blasting sound of a pod firing up and shooting into the sky.

The conical white figure rode up and out of the atmosphere and you remembered the shuttle service was ending that cycle. That pod was probably the last one to leave. Anyone left behind on this moon either had to have their own ship, like yourself, or were destined to spend the remainder of their lives breathing through a filter.

You hadn’t run into many people on your time here, trying to avoid contact as much as possible. You carried a thrower for security but weren’t sure if you had the guts to use it. Your mission here was a scientific one.

Curiosity got the better of you and you stood up to check out what had happened. You crawled out of your hiding spot and discovered that you were near a clearing in the woods, an old dig pit lay to your left, and the ring of black marks from the pod’s launch charred the grass to your left. An empty cage and a still-burning campfire were in front of you, eerie with the still-standing floodlight.

A body lay near the fire. Another in the pit. You could see the shine of fresh blood around him.

You wanted to leave.

As you turned around something caught your eye in the forest that stretched out a few meters higher in elevation than the clearing. A light. Definitely a helmet light. And it was moving, ever so slightly.

Someone still alive was out there and the sensible thing to do would be to run back to your pod and launch back into your ship. But a voice in your head said they might have been hurt in the fight. Might be injured. Might have meant to be on that ship. You couldn’t leave them behind.

You swallowed your fears and plunged into the dark of the forest towards the dim light, your hand gripping tight on the thrower that hung at your side.

As you neared, it was clear you had found someone. The light wasn’t the thing moving, but rather its reflection on the helmet of a man, blood pouring out of his stomach, eyes closed, chest barely rising and falling. Beside him lay the light source: a woman, dead and neck bloodied.

You prodded at the man, willing him to wake up. He came to life with a distant cough, the sound of which was enough for you to know he didn’t have a working air filter. Scrambling, you pulled his hose towards your own filter and plugged it in, the clean air doing little to help his breathing. However, his eyes blinked open, lids still heavy, but blinking, staring at the ground below him.

“Cee,” he said. You could hear it through the panes of glass separating yourselves. “I thought I instructed you to leave me behind. I ain’t gonna make it. Your soul is worth much more than my own.”

“Who the hell is Cee?”

He looked up at you. “I find myself mistaken. You. Are not Cee.”

“That is correct,” you smiled. You rotated the dial on his radio to the channel you were using.

“Are you with Karoclan? If that is my fate, it’s best to kill me now. Please lend me at the very least that mercy and not delay.” His voice, now clear in your ear, was shallow. His accent was difficult to place. Maybe Muir? Or Gandre? You couldn’t tell, but that was typical of drifters. Was he a drifter?

“I am not with Karoclan. I am here alone,” you said. Maybe not the best of words, placing you in potential risk, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. You had just noticed the limp sleeve of his suit, tied near the elbow. He had just lost an arm. He couldn’t have been a threat if he wanted to.

“What is a woman doing here in the Green all alone? You prospecting? Because you are too late, miss. The last pod has taken leave and we will die here. If not killed by the villager, we shall be reclaimed by this moon’s floor.”

“I’m here on a scientific mission. From Belda, near Central,” you explained.

“That scientific knowledge may only go so far now that we are here for our shortened lives.”

“I have a ship.”

“And is there the possibility of your ship having space sufficient for two travelers?”

“It does,” you said. You were going to regret this, but what could you do? The man was a charmer.

“I presume since you are traveling alone, that your second spot remains unoccupied?”

“It is.”

“Well then, may I humbly request passage off of this godforsaken moon?”

“Depends. What’s your name?”

“Ezra.”

“Well Ezra, do you care to join me? We take off in an hour.”

.

Your ship had more than enough room for two people. It was big enough for a whole crew. The research institute had given you a large endowment to seek out the aurelac gems that were selling at high prices across the galaxy with little information on any of their properties, let alone where they had come from. Along with the money, you were provided a fully outfitted ship.

It was at least thirty stands ago that the first murmurs of aurelac had swirled around. Within a fraction of a cycle, everyone had left work, disappearing to the few planets where they could try to make a fortune. Ten stands later and things were back to normal and since then the price for aurelac only skyrocketed as the supply dwindled. It might not have been a hot commodity anymore, but it had a forceful grip on the intergalactic economy.

You peaked into the medical bay where Ezra lay asleep. Prospectors were few these days, most of them having struck big and retired to remote locations or given up the search and either returned home or continued drifting. But Ezra hadn’t. And you had no idea why.

He had passed out as soon as you made it to the pod, and you had to drag him into the medical bay when you reached your ship. You didn’t sleep for longer than was healthy, patching him up. He had several wounds that should have been fatal, and the amputated arm needed to be covered up. You might have been a doctor, however, medicine was not your specialty. It wasn’t pretty, but it did the job.

.

“What have you done with my arm?”

“Skin graft,” you shrugged. It had been a while since you left orbit of the green moon, and Ezra had just woken up. You sat beside his bed in a chair.

“Skin graft?”

“Yes. I had to take some skin from your abdominal region. Used it to cover your arm. Whoever cut that off did a good job. Clean. That’s good.”

“Cee.” Ezra breathed out. This was the third time you’d heard the name.

“Who is Cee? She must have been very important to you.”

“Only knew her for a couple of cycles. She and her father came seeking the Queen’s Lair. Cee and I ended up wandering the Green. She may be a young girl but she has a mind the size of a star.”

“Where’s her father?”

“I killed him,” he said.

Your stomach dropped. You opened your mouth to ask why but no sound came out.

“Ma’am, you cannot be a stranger to murder. Out this far from Central? We live solely for ourselves, you cannot get attached because people will betray you. Best to stay five steps ahead.”

“I—” you cut yourself off before claiming to have never killed anyone. While true, it would not have boded well for you. Ezra would see you as weak. That was not an outcome you wanted to entertain.

“Cee’s father was attempting to steal the fruits of my own work. You do not do that without running the risk of death out here.”

“Where is Cee now?” You prayed she wasn’t dead. You knew little, but Ezra seemed to care for her.

“If she listened to me, she has long since left that moon in the last pod to depart. She is now left to the mercy of the Drift.”

Ezra swung his legs down and pushed his torso upright with his one arm.

“I wouldn’t do that—” you spluttered out, placing a hand on his chest to stop him from standing. But he was too determined, pushing forward and up.

It took less than a second for Ezra’s knees to sway and he crumpled into a pile on the floor.

“...the drugs haven’t worn off yet.” You mumbled to the ship.

.

Ezra had learned his lesson when he woke up. He remained on the bed until he had fully recovered. You had work to do: testing the gems you had collected, ship maintenance, navigation. But the downtime was spent by Ezra’s side.

Given Ezra’s penchant for words, you had thought he would never exhaust in tales of his life and questions about yours, but you were both private people and the stories of your lives were not often easy to say.

Together, you had come up with a game. One of you would name a place you had been or wished to go and an unrelated item. The other would have to come up with a story about it. When that got boring, you added in another element, where you had to include three preset words.

It kept you entertained for a while, but you knew Ezra was growing bored again.

.

“Who are you?” Ezra asked when you walked into the medical bay one day.

You hadn’t been asked a question like that in a long time. He knew your name. Your job. Where you worked. This wasn’t a question of your information and identity. This was a question about something deeper. You stood by his bed, staring at him for a while as you thought of an answer.

“I’m... I’m a scientist.”

“No. Scientists work in labs and do field research. They work together and for companies and write papers. You do not seem the type to seek that strain of employment.”

“You yourself said that one has to do what they must to make a living. I enjoy my work.” You weren’t sure what to make of Ezra. He was truly an enigma, one that you were struggling to decode.

“You are lonely.” It was a bold claim coming from him, one that gave you pause.

“And are you not?”

.

Your lab on the ship was small, meaning the number of aurelac gems you had extracted, along with the biological material in which they grew, were littered across every available surface. They were fascinating. And as you walked into the lab, you could tell someone else found them just as intriguing.

Ezra had been walking for some time now. The artificial cycles had come and gone, and he still had no answer as to where he would like to go. You still had a half-stand until you reached Belda, giving him plenty of time to make a decision.

He now stood in the center of your lab, staring at the number of gems you had collected. They would fetch a high price on the market, and the shine of a needy man could be seen in Ezra’s eyes.

“Thinking about stealing it?” you said.

He startled and looked up at you guiltily. “I—”

“It’s fine,” you waved your hand. “You’re a prospector. I get it.”

“You do not understand a thing,” he drawled. “You have an occupation that will sustain you for the rest of your life. I have none of that. What you carry in this ship would buoy my existence for many stands. It is worth more than I have ever had cross my hands. And you are here acting like it is little more than a scientific endeavor.”

“Is a scientific endeavor so worthless to you?”

“It is not worthless to me except when it is deleterious to the lifestyle of others,” he said, his voice rising in volume.

“You think the gems are a lifestyle? Their value will drop. And the harvesting? You may not have noticed, but every time you harvest a gem, an entire organism dies. All of this here? Only killed two and harvested every part of them. An average case is harvested from nine different colonies. Nine deaths. And you don’t even obtain half as much as you see here. Your lifestyle harms too.”

“My lifestyle, at the very least, does not rely on a predilection for the attention of the corporations that cause the ruin of our very society. Mine relies on labor and equanimity and acumen, and I will gladly kill a few to ensure my future. One that is not so secure as yours.” When angry, Ezra’s face warps into something sinister and aggressive, a far cry from the pained and softened appearance of him while he was injured.

You close your eyes for a brief moment, taking a deep breath to center yourself. You had no interest in fighting Ezra more on this. It was clear you were the villain in his eyes, or at least the figure he wanted to project his frustrations on, and you were not going to continue with the fight. It was not worth it when you had many more cycles left with him.

“If you care so deeply about them, wait until you are leaving to take them. It does you no good to steal from those you are still living with.”

The days following your argument the conversation had died down, only to pick up again once you were both fed up with not speaking to the other.

.

“You still haven’t told me where you want to be dropped off,” you told him. Ezra had been recovering steadily, and you knew within another couple of your ship-generated light cycles he would be ready to leave.

“I have never been given the option,” he said.

You blinked. There was still so much you didn’t know about Ezra. And over the time you had spent with him you had grown so accustomed to his presence that this very conversation was one you had been putting off.

“Do you have family? Friends? Anyone that you would stay with?”

“I am alone.”

It was a raw admission that you might have seen coming, but nevertheless hit you like a stray bullet. Before you could even think of the consequences of your words, you said, “Do you want to come with me? To the lab? There’s plenty of work at the institute? And around the rest of Belda.”

“Not for a drifter like me. My lifestyle is indubitably incompatible with a planet like yours,” he said, shaking his head.

“Sure there is, Ezra,” you said. “There’s plenty to do, and you don’t have anything else.”

He stepped back and you regretted that sentence more than anything you had ever said. “I suppose I do not.”

He walked away that night. Into the cabin that he had claimed. You didn’t see him for another two artificial cycles. When he did show up again, he was no longer the same man. He didn’t smile all the way to his eyes, and his sentences were cut short.

You didn’t want to admit it, even to yourself, but you cried yourself to sleep often after that day. Partly because of the loneliness, but that wasn’t where the shame was rooted. That spot was reserved for the love you felt for Ezra which was no longer returned, if it ever was.

.

You stepped out onto the solid ground of Belda, happy for the fresh, clean air that filled the skies. Ezra’s first steps out of the landing pod were shaky, and you wondered how long it had been since he had set foot on a fully terraformed planet.

“You go down that road,” you told him, gesturing towards your left, “About a kilometer down you’ll find the shuttle hangar. There’s plenty of people there that need workers for off-planet stuff. Once you sign on they’ll take you to the docking station up in orbit where you’ll transfer to their ships. And you get to return to your life. Win-win.”

“That is quite the deal,” he said, staring off at the point he would be headed.

“So this is it?” you asked, facing him.

“I am afraid so,” he looked over at you. Part of you wanted to embrace him. If you weren’t able to keep him, at least you could hold him in your arms for a moment. Pretend that you could have a life where you were not so lonely. But before you could come to a conclusion, he was walking away. And he took your heart with him.

.

Your trip to Bakhroma Green might have been work, but it felt like a vacation. Ten cycles had passed since you returned, and life had, unfortunately, returned to normal. Wake up, eat, go to work, a meeting, labs, write papers, lunch, teach university students, another meeting, clean, more writing, return home, sleep. Ezra was right. You might have had a job that offered more social interaction than most, but you were so lonely.

You were in your office, responding to some communications with a scientist on Kamrea who had found an organism similar to that of the aurelac gems on their home planet when you received a call from reception.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but there is a man down here. He says he will not leave until he sees you.”

“Who is he?”

“He won’t say.”

You sighed. Work would have to wait. You closed up your screen and got into the elevator, riding down to the lobby. The doors slid open and you saw a familiar face, hunched over in a chair in the corner. Ezra.

He was out of place wearing regular clothing and sitting in a waiting room as if he were the sort to wait for a doctor or a lawyer rather than do it himself. He didn’t notice you until you were standing in front of him. He looked up, took a sharp inhale. His exhale was shaky as he stood, his singular arm reaching out to touch your shoulder. Maybe it was for stability, but part of you knew him well enough to know he just wanted to touch someone.

“You’re here.” He said.

You nodded.

“I did not know where to go. I am afraid I do not have anyone else,” he said. Your words from your argument flashed before your eyes. You hated that he had internalized them. Then he looked at you in the eye in a way that you felt much deeper than just your face. “I do hope that I have you?”

His absence had torn you apart so much and seeing him again was a confusion you had never felt. It seemed this man was one who would not stop surprising you. “Of course you have me, Ezra.”

“Of that, I am eternally thankful. Your companionship is unparagoned.”

You swallowed. You were not ready to see him again. To hear him say words like these.

“What do you want?” you asked.

“I do not know, only that I am desperate for assistance,” he said, voice low and strained. And you noticed the slight tremor to his body. You nodded again.

“Wait here. I need to clean up upstairs, then I can return,” you said, reaching out to his arm, squeezing gently on his forearm for assurance.

An hour later you sat on one end of the couch in your small apartment, Ezra at the other end, mugs of tea in both your hands. His was to mollify the anxiety, yours was to bring a sense of normalcy back when you had just been confronted with a face you spent nights trying to forget.

“...lost. I do not know where in this wide galaxy I can ever belong. I do not know where Cee is, if I did I may have attempted to find her. But I know little more than her first name and her favorite book. She and her father were drifters, like me. You never encounter another drifter twice.” He stopped to take a sip and you felt your heart sink. There was nothing more heartbreaking than to lose a friend.

“And now without my arm, while I am forever in your debt for the prodigious work, I do not have anything. I cannot do the work I have previously been trained to do. I cannot make a living. I do not have anyone. I do not even know if I have you,” he said, voice breaking. “I am sorry, I should not be putting you in the position to take me in. We hardly know one another, this was a bad—”

“Ezra!” You sat your mug down on the side table and crawled over to him on the couch. You placed one arm on his own, the other on the top of his shoulder, brushing lightly up and down. “It’s okay. I don’t mind you coming here. You have me.”

There were tears in his eyes as he opened his mouth again. “I missed you.”

“As did I,” you confessed. You sank back onto your heels, arms dropped as you knelt beside him. “My offer still stands. You can stay here. There’s work, plenty of it. And you can train in new skills that don’t require two upper appendages. It’s a big city.”

“I cannot request such a sacrifice of your generosity,” he protested.

“It is not a sacrifice, Ezra,” you assured. “I’d actually like it very much if you stayed. I am very alone here. The time I spent with you? You made me feel a little less alone.”

“What can I offer to you in exchange? I have nothing,” he said. “You have already rescued me once.”

“And I do not require anything.” You shook your head, “Don’t you understand? You’ve given me so much already. Your presence would be more than enough.”

“I cannot acce—”

“There is one thing,” you said. You were thinking selfishly at this moment, and had it not resulted in a success, you might have regretted such actions, but the triumph was enough for you to think back often to your words and thank yourself for saying exactly the ones you did. “You can kiss me.”

He blinked and you felt your stomach flip in place. The seconds that lasted before he spoke again felt stretched out, a whole cycle could have elapsed and not felt as long at the wait for Ezra’s response. Then he grinned.

“That is a skill I do possess,” he said. “And may be able to provide.”

And then he raised his hand to your cheek, brushing it gently before reaching around to the base of your neck, pulling you closer to capture your lips in his. You wrapped one arm around his torso and snaked the other up into his hair as you tasted the sweet remains of the tea on his tongue. He pulled off enough to smile against your lips.

“Would this arrangement be a one-time event? Or do I perhaps need to comply a few more times to fully pay off the debt I owe to you.”

“Ezra? You can kiss me whenever you wish,” you laughed.


End file.
